Losing the Signal

Journalists Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff chart the rapid rise and steep fall of BlackBerry. The company began above a bagel store in Ontario, built on an unlikely partnership between visionary engineer Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, an abrasive graduate of Harvard Business School. Together they produced a pocket email device that presidents and CEOs adopted. Feuds inside the company and chaotic expansion weakened it at the very moment it ranked as the fastest growing company in the world, just as Apple and Google entered mobile phones. The authors treat it as a story of competition rather than fraud or greed, drawing on access to executives, directors, competitors and other key players.

Ramit Sethi included it in his list of 50 books he recommends. WeWork's Erik Martin called it a well-told reminder of how quickly habits and technologies shift, especially for companies at the top.